ethnically pure Hungarian past. Szegedi
published a political autobiography in
which he claimed to be descended
from a "thousand-year-old" Hungar-
ian family, tracing his father's ancestors
back to pre-Christian Hungary. He
also led a campaign to revive Old Hun-
garian runes---the script used before
the Latin alphabet---and to place runic
signs across the country. When he
married Krisztina Hornyák, in 2008,
he had his wedding ring inscribed with
runes, too.
But the Turul shop benefitted far
more from one of Szegedi's other proj-
ects. In 2007, he helped to organize
the Hungarian Guard, a paramilitary
group whose members wore black uni-
forms designed to evoke the Arrow
Cross, Hungary's wartime Fascist
party. The Guard practiced military
drills and, in a number of towns, staged
"anti-Gypsy-crime" marches, which
sometimes ended in violence. The
Guard offered an identity, an organiza-
tion, and activities that appealed partic-
ularly to young people. Thousands
joined Jobbik after the Guard's forma-
tion, and many of them bought uni-
forms, hats, boots, flags, and badges at
Szegedi's Turul shop. In 2009, the
courts ordered the Guard to disband.
Nevertheless, Szegedi made his first
appearance in the European Parlia-
ment wearing the Guard uniform. Ac-
cording to one Polish politician, he was
instantly mistaken for an electrician.
The Hungarian Guard, however
short-lived, altered the character of
Jobbik. Members drawn in by the
Guard were less educated, and even
more radical, than the students who
had founded the Party. Anti-Semitic
jokes were heard more frequently at ral-
lies, and a Web site, called kuruc.info
(after the Kuruc, anti-Habsburg rebels
of the seventeenth century), began to
play a significant role in Jobbik's inter-
nal politics. Kuruc.info rails against
"outsiders" of all kinds. Its best-known
column, "Gypsycrime," collects anti-
Roma "facts." There is a "Jewcrime"
feature as well; one recent article, ac-
companied by a caricature of a hook-
nosed man, his face spread onto a
lampshade, jeered at the "myth" of
Auschwitz. Contributors, who are
anonymous, regularly post the names,
photographs, and telephone numbers
of "liberal"---i.e., Jewish---journalists,
intellectuals, and public figures, and call
on readers to harass them by mail or
by phone. During the 2010 election,
kuruc.info was the third most widely
read news Web site in Hungary. Its
readership has since dropped, but its
influence is clear: a poll last year showed
that sixty-three per cent of Hungarians
feel hostile toward Jews, up from forty-
seven per cent in 2009.
Kuruc.info is run out of a server
in Healdsburg, California, by a Hun-
garian-American with extreme-right
views. This makes it impossible for the
Hungarian government to shut it down.
Officially, Jobbik has no relationship
with the explicitly racist Web site, be-
cause, officially, Jobbik is not anti-Se-
mitic. But Barikád advertises on kuruc.
info, and Jobbik offers the site support
in other ways. When Szegedi was
elected to the European Parliament, he
began to make regular, public payments
out of his parliamentary staff budget to
three men widely known to work at
kuruc.info. One of them was Előd
Novák, the Party leader who poured
lighter fluid on the European Union
flag.Szegedi is vague about his reasons for
paying Novák, pointing to pressure or
even coercion. "Everybody knew," he
said, that Novák and his colleagues had
to be "respected." Novák told me that he
was paid for "communications consult-
ing work."
But six months after he spoke at the
flag-burning rally, Szegedi stopped
those payments and abruptly resigned
from Jobbik altogether. An astonishing
story had broken: Csanád Szegedi---
founder of the Hungarian Guard, pur-
veyor of nationalist kitsch, teller of anti-
Semitic jokes---had discovered that he
was Jewish. His maternal grandmother,
now in her nineties, is a survivor of
Auschwitz.
I met Szegedi last spring, in the offices
of Chabad Lubavitch in Budapest.
He was accompanied by Rabbi Slomó
Köves. The two make an odd-looking
pair. Köves is a short, round, impish